by Erin Evans
“Go!” Mehen shouted, starting toward the beast again.
Ilstan tore his gaze away from the creature, started again—
—Magic shifts under Ilstan’s concentration, forming it like a cloak around the other war wizard, a stocky brown-haired man. The spell wraps him, closer and closer until it snaps around him like a second skin, and the war wizard stands, no longer human but an elf of extraordinarily similar features. The Royal Wizard of Cormyr only raises his thick auburn brows, and Ilstan flushes with pride—
He blinked. The cavern, the creature, the staff. Ten more steps. He ran at it, not watching his feet, trying only to get farther.
—The air beneath Ilstan’s feet lifts him high over the heads of the Purple Dragons, over the army of goblins and hobgoblins and bugbears clashing before him. He raises his wand and the words that pour from him are a power all their own, as they condense high above, around dust and nothing, and rain down on the monsters, a hailstorm of fire—
The creature roared, wrenching Ilstan’s thoughts back to the present. He glanced back—closer, too close. He felt the surge of spells from Farideh, from the cambion, from the Harper and Caisys—the creature returned nearly as many and still the air was thick with bats.
Farideh reached Ilstan and shoved him hard the last few feet toward the staff. He felt his thoughts start to spin away and clung to the sound of the creature’s roars, the shouts of his comrades, the sour, flinty smell of dissolving limestone, and the charred stink of the monster’s flesh as he heaved himself up onto the plinth and closed one hand around the pale wood of the staff of Azuth—
—A human man stands before a wide window, overlooking a green countryside far—impossibly far—below, working magic into a solid surface, layer after layer after layer. Invisible and strong as stone, he thinks. Perfect—
—The elf woman shapes the spell, her hands tracing mystic passes through the air, her eyes always, always on her opponent, a big orc wearing a warrior’s armor tight across bound breasts. The snow falls dry and sharp and cold as the orc swings an axe at another elf, a man with a long sword, but the wizard smiles. You can’t block this with an axe—
—A pipe floats beside the old man, waiting for him to finish crafting the spell that will link this plane to the next. Or the one after that. There’s such a lot of places he has yet to see—
—The cat leaps onto the Turami wizard’s shoulder, his beard cut into a sharp square, but his concentration never wavers. He leans over the shimmering glass before him, his dark face lit amber with magic and scenes of a far-off battle—
The images raced through Ilstan’s mind, a blur of other wizards, other spells. As they sped, faster and faster through his thoughts, in the spaces between those other times and places he glimpsed the face of an older man with a snow-white beard, his features uncertain but his eyes burning blue into Ilstan’s very heart.
Wizard, a voice rang through him, down to his very bones, and every part of Ilstan began to vibrate with the strange, stirring magic of the staff.
Ilstan opened his eyes, still humming with the power of the staff, and looked up into the maw of the deformed behir looming overhead, Farideh between them, sword drawn back, the Harper running full speed toward her. For all Ilstan’s mind knew the scene that lay before him was terrifying, a perfect calm claimed him instead as he stepped forward and laid a hand upon Farideh’s shoulder.
“Wizard,” he said, in a voice not entirely his own.
• • •
MEHEN WATCHED FARIDEH shove Ilstan the last few feet to reach the staff of Azuth. As the wizard’s hands closed on the artifact, blue flames engulfed him, the staff, the plinth it stood upon, until it was impossible to separate one from the other in the blazing light. Mehen flinched away from the brightness—
Vozhin’s tail slammed into him, taking Mehen off his feet and tossing him away to land hard on the stone. He heard his injured shoulder crunch again before pain exploded up through his entire body, like a bolt of lightning. He gritted his teeth, coming onto his feet. Vozhin thrashed as Dahl cast another string of missiles at it. Above, more spell-bats, having tried to roost again, fled screeching from Adastreia as she scrabbled over the ceiling like a spider.
Mehen’s right arm hung useless, his hand numb around the falchion’s hilt. He gripped his arm around the biceps, trying to lift it out and forward, but got only blinding pain. Karshoji shoulder, he thought, trying to shift it again. How many times had he done this?
“Fari!” he shouted the moment Vozhin swung its head away from her.
Caisys swung his staff into one of the spell-bats—a burst of blue fire raced down over him and a moment later the tip of the staff sprayed … a stream of crystal-clear water over the cave.
“Are you stlarning kidding me?” he bellowed, swinging for another spell-bat.
“Stay out of the water!” Mehen shouted and hoped they’d listen. You made the mistake of testing your breath in the rain only once. Farideh at least skipped out of the puddles as she darted over to him.
“Shoulder,” he said. She took the falchion and grabbed hold of his elbow, pulling it outward as far as it would go, then lifted his arm high, reaching over his head. Pain far worse than it should have been seared across Mehen’s joint. “Stop!” he gasped.
“You popped it backward. I can’t set it.” Farideh searched the roof. “Adastreia!” she shouted. “We need help!”
Her calls drew Vozhin’s attention, but even as it swung its head toward her, drawing its head back, ready to spray its terrible breath again, Farideh swung the falchion up and into another of the spell-bats, hardly pausing between the rush of blue fire and the spell bursting out of her off hand, scattering a score of bright flashing lights through the air. Vozhin flinched away.
A cool mist swirled beside Mehen, reforming as Adastreia, looking thoroughly rattled as she pinched one topaz bead. Her silver eyes flicked over Mehen. “Shoulder?”
“Please,” Mehen said.
Farideh shoved his falchion back into his off hand. “I’ll keep it away from you,” she said, drawing her own sword and the wand of lightning bolts. Mehen started to protest that the pothach wand wasn’t going to do a bit of good against a beast with that much lightning in its belly, but she aimed it upward instead, at the circling spell-bats. Despite everything, Mehen had to feel a little pleased.
“How bad is it?” Adastreia asked, rubbing the beads between her fingers.
“Bad,” Mehen said. “Wasn’t healed from the last time someone popped the joint. I think it’s come out the wrong side too.”
Adastreia frowned, counting beads. Beyond her, Dahl tossed aside his wand, its blasts expended, and ran in to take his blade to the beast’s side. Vozhin snatched another mouthful of bats, rays of searing light streaming from its eyes. Caisys cried out.
“Save your strong ones for him!” Mehen snapped.
“I know what I’m doing,” Adastreia said mildly. Her little hand hardly covered the sphere of his shoulder, but she gripped the joint with surprising strength. Her other hand pinched one of the topazes until it flashed. Cool magic tingled through the damaged joint and all down his arm. He heard a reassuring pop.
“Better?” Adastreia asked.
Mehen tightened his grip on the falchion—a bolt of pain shot up from his wrist to his shoulder and he winced. “Good enough, now go—”
Vozhin convulsed, lashing its tail once more toward them. Farideh caught it this time, bracing and shifting her weight so that her blade took the bulk of the force as it shoved her back. She tripped over a bit of disturbed stone, tumbling backward, but then rolled up to her feet. Vozhin turned toward where she crouched.
“On your right, paladin!” Lorcan shouted.
The cambion had hit the ground, a stone’s throw from Dahl. Wand out, spell building—Dahl looked back and pivoted, stepping backward away from the last ray of frost the wand contained. Into the pool of water. The smallest of smiles curled Lorcan’s mouth.
Mehen sh
oved Adastreia aside. The frost missed Vozhin and another bolus of the electric slime was building in its throat. And it was looking at Dahl, at Dahl’s feet. The lightning in its teeth crackled.
Dahl looked up only as Mehen hit him, pushing him out of the pool and out of danger just as the creature’s lightning breath hit the water and exploded up through Mehen. All the air went out of him as if it had vanished, and every nerve in his body turned sharp and searing as if it had decided to slice its way out.
Mehen remembered the feeling, in that last breath before the lightning hit and he realized he wasn’t going to miss it. He remembered his own breath reflecting back at him in the wet. He remembered his father’s ire turned on him. He knew how much it would hurt and how long it would last and how much more prepared for it he was than Dahl.
But in the moment, he thought nothing.
The lightning released him and it was all Mehen could do not to collapse to the floor, no longer held stiff by electricity. His thoughts came back together, his grip tightened on his falchion and the pain shot up his arm again.
He heard Farideh scream, but by the time he recognized his name, a hot damp darkness had closed over him and it didn’t matter what she’d said. It was too late.
• • •
FARIDEH ROSE TO her feet just in time to see Mehen shove Dahl out of the pool left behind by Caisys’s unlucky spell, to see the lightning seize him. She’d started running when Vozhin slithered nearer, and the lightning flashed out.
Mehen stumbled not seeing the beast rise over him, its enormous mouth gaping like a snake about to take its prey. Farideh heard herself scream, “Mehen! Move!”
His head turned lazily as if he’d only half heard her, and Farideh watched as the monster plunged down and snapped her father up in one gulp.
Farideh shattered.
Her mind went blank, utterly blank, and then raced, scrambling for a way to undo what she’d just seen. Maybe she’d seen wrong. Maybe if she moved away from the beast, it would spit Mehen back out. Maybe one of the spell-bats would contain a miracle, a gift to turn the glass back over and stop her ever coming here.
But her body screamed, her body ran, her body held the short sword Mehen had laid in her hands when she was old enough for a dragonborn but still absurdly small for a tiefling. Her nerves pulled sharp against her flesh like razor wire as she grasped for the Hells and the power to split the plane again, and again she found nothing—nothing.
Just the blade. Just the legacy of Clanless Mehen.
Vozhin tossed its head back, the lump of its meal sliding down its fleshy throat. “My arms are tired,” Farideh complains, six and hating the way Mehen and Havilar watch her, pick at her. “I want to go in. The lump bulged—did Mehen twitch? Did he move? Was she going mad? “Good,” Mehen says. “That means they’re getting stronger. Do it again.” The soft belly of the behir, that’s where to strike it. Or the throat. What if she hit Mehen? “I’m never going to be good at this,” Farideh says. “You should just stop.” But he laughs. “Someday you’ll need it.”
You need it, she thought, leaping over the broken stones, eyes on Vozhin, only on Vozhin. But you never got good at it. You chose the wrong path and now you’re trapped.
Vozhin turned to her now, ignoring the flashes of magic that struck weakly against its flank.
Well you’re going to do it anyway, she told herself calmly, adjusting her grip on the sword.
A hand grabbed hold of her shoulder yanking her to a stop. Ilstan, holding the staff and radiant with a pale bluish light.
“Wizard,” he intoned.
—The silver-haired woman regards the armies below her, a faint smile on her lovely lips. The Red Wizards are formidable in their magic, and she has to admire their skill. The beast the necromancers have crafted, a writhing monster of stitched flesh and too many bones, bellows its rage, its agony. Well-made, she thinks, but unacceptable. She draws the Weave near, the effort of an inhalation, enough to destroy the unspeakable beast that—
No, Farideh begged. No. I don’t want revenge. I want a way to save him. Please.
The images, memories of another time, vanished abruptly into a field of white, and then—
—“I’m not about to let you just blast it,” the blond woman says to the dark-skinned woman beside her. She draws a gleaming long sword. “Where’s the fun in that?” The Royal Wizard regards the regent with a pursed mouth. Beyond them, a sinuous creature winds through the air over a seaside village, dark magic oozing from it. “You’re not as young as you once were,” the wizard says. “Neither are you,” the regent replies. The wizard sighs, and magic fills her hands. “Take this at least.”—
Farideh came back to herself, the spell pulling all the broken parts back together into something whole. Vozhin loomed over her, blazing eyes fixed on her. She slid the rod from her sleeve, into her off hand.
“Run, you idiots!” Caisys shouted. “You’ve got the staff, now go!”
“Jabber two-legs,” Vozhin chortled, the void of its great mouth like a terrible cave. “You go next.”
“My sword goes next!” Farideh shouted back, feeling the spell saturate every part of her, threatening to burst free. She pointed the blade at Vozhin, stalking toward it. “Now I drag you to the Hells!”
Vozhin laughed, loud and deep and rolling through the cavern to startle the last of the spell-bats into flight. Its mouth opened wide, gasping air.
Farideh whipped the rod toward the creature’s mouth, and the spell that had blessed the regent’s sword bloomed violet at the tip of the rod and shot unerringly down Vozhin’s open throat. The beast looked startled, the light of the spell glowing through its skin, making shadows of bones and viscera, down to its belly where it went dark.
Hands grabbed Farideh—Dahl, pulling on her arm—but her feet stuck in place. That wasn’t what it did. That wasn’t the end of the spell, was it?
A slow cruel smile curled across Vozhin’s mouth. “Toasty. Is it warm in there for you n—”
The wet sound of tearing flesh came a breath before Vozhin broke off in a scream that made Farideh’s guts unwind. The creature’s neck went straight and thrashed from side to side as a wound opened in its side, a familiar blade, glowing violet, cutting through its rubbery skin. Mehen staggered out, eyes wild, scales pitted and missing in places, but his falchion still gripped in both hands and lightning spitting in his teeth.
“Gods damn it! Run!” Caisys shouted again, from up on the ridge.
Farideh grabbed Dahl’s arm and raced toward Mehen. “Help me!” she cried, sheathing her sword and grabbing her injured father under his shoulder. Where the acid still clung to his scales, it stung against Farideh’s wrist and palm. She clenched her teeth as more of Mehen’s weight came onto her than she’d expected, but she pulled him toward the slope with Dahl’s help.
Vozhin’s tail lashed frantically as its blood oozed out of Mehen’s exit. Farideh looked up and saw its head rise, eyes mad with pain and rage, jaws ready to snap over the source of its agony. They were nearly to the slope up to the ridge. They might make it.
The wet, dragging sound of the creature, its snarling whine. Farideh’s pulse quickened, her nerves screaming as her powers didn’t come.
“Chaubask vur kepeshk,” Mehen panted. “What the godsbedamned Hells—”
“Up,” Dahl ordered as they finally reached the slope. He made a step of his hands, Farideh did the same, and between the two of them—and Caisys and Adastreia above—they got Mehen up to the ridge.
Just as Vozhin reached them. Farideh pulled her sword free as it lunged, blocking the snapping teeth with a sword across its snout. It hissed, drawing back and oozing more amber blood.
“This is not the way it ends,” it snarled, eyes flickering as it drew itself up. “I end, you end!”
Wordlessly, Dahl reached back, pushing her toward the slope, holding up his ringed fist toward Vozhin. “Avinos.”
The ring exploded with force, enough to shove Dahl backward into Fa
rideh. She caught him, held him upright as the magic took the shape of a ghostly ram moments before its horns slammed into Vozhin’s snout.
Dahl turned and again made a step of his hand. Farideh didn’t argue but let him boost her up to the higher ledge, where Caisys grabbed hold of her by the wrists and pulled her over. She turned to help Dahl up, but suddenly, Lorcan had crushed her close.
“Darling,” he said, sounding relieved, and every part of Farideh wanted to shove him away—where was Mehen? Where was Dahl?
“Stop dawdling and go!” Caisys yelled, pulling the Harper up beside him. “It’s not stlarning dead yet.”
Dahl’s eyes fell on her, but Farideh wasn’t even thinking anymore. She shoved Lorcan toward the mouth of the skull where Ilstan waited, still swirling with the strange blue light. “Go!” she shouted at Ilstan. If he didn’t escape, none of this mattered.
She tried to wait for Dahl, but Caisys shoved her forward, and in the hollow of the Dawn Titan’s skull, the darkness, the closeness made the cold calm that had clamped down around her start to fray. One by one they slipped through the hole at the base of the skull. As Lorcan disappeared, she heard the wet, dragging sound of Vozhin pulling itself up the cliffs again.
“You!” she pulled Caisys ahead of her. Without him there was no portal, no way to escape. She turned to Dahl, to pull him after Caisys. But he was already there, pushing her forward.
“Caisys, get moving!” he shouted, the faintest tremor in his voice. Farideh crouched down behind the wizard, halfway through the hole when a wheezing hiss echoed through the skull.
“I … end,” Vozhin wheezed, teeth crackling with lightning and jaws dripping with slime. “You … end.” A ball of acid built in its throat. Farideh slid back into the skull.
“Stlarn it.” Dahl made a fist, thrust it at the back of the skull, just over his head. “Avinos!”
The rush of magic burst out of the ring, the ghostly ram forming inches before the titan’s bone. Farideh grabbed hold of Dahl by the shirtfront, yanking him down and through the hole at the base of the skull, as the spell struck and a sound like the pealing of a bell the size of a mountain rang out. Pain stabbed her ears and then they went numb, ringing and ringing with the sound of the titan’s skull as she and Dahl squeezed through the too-small hole. She felt, not heard, the vibrations of the cave collapsing behind them, as hands pulled her to her feet.
